Writing Chinese

target: zh — Chinese, 中文, in simplified or traditional characters, written left to right or in vertical columns. Its pronunciation is pinyin, in the transliteration: Chinese has no reading of its own script, as Japanese has kana.

1. How its text is found#

Chinese needs no mark: its characters, the Chinese punctuation ，。、？！： and the full-width signs are found on their own. There are no spaces between words, so a run is the characters that touch; a space, a Latin letter or a western digit ends it.

---target: zh---Chinese needs no mark: 我学习中文 = *I study Chinese*, and **中文** is bold.学而时习之，不亦说乎？我每天学习30分钟中文，周末学习一个小时。[周末我们去唱卡拉OK吧！]{tl}

• A paragraph of nothing but characters and Chinese punctuation — not even a figure — is a display line, set larger.
• A paragraph with no Latin letter is a Chinese paragraph, figures included.
• A stretch with Latin letters in it is marked […]{tl} or […]{zh}: the OK of 卡拉OK would cut it in two otherwise.

Keep each sentence on one line of the source: the lines of a paragraph are joined with a space, which Chinese does not want.

2. Faces and vertical columns#

Chinese is set in Noto Serif CJK SC, from your device on the screen, and on paper; no Chinese face travels with the toolbox, and there is no second face (font= is ignored). Its text is set 1.20 times the size of the prose.

vertical (or tategaki, or mode=vertical) sets a block in columns, top to bottom, right to left; height= is a column’s height in em, 8 to 60, 22 when left out.

---target: zh---[床前明月光，⏎疑是地上霜。⏎举头望明月，⏎低头思故乡。]{tl vertical height=8 bg=sand}[A：你好吗？⏎B：我很好，谢谢。你呢？]{tl bg=sage}

---target: zh---[学而时习之，⏎不亦说乎？]{tl mode=vertical height=8}

A vertical block’s tint shows on the screen and is dropped on paper, where the columns are set rotated.

3. Vocabulary entries#

Three parts after the headword, as in Persian: pinyin, origin, meaning. There is no reading part.

---target: zh---## 学习 | xuéxí | = *to study, to learn*## [咖啡]{teal translit:kāfēi} | | from English *coffee* | = *coffee*

4. Pinyin#

The transliteration is Hanyu Pinyin with tone marks, of what is said, the same in every document whatever the prose is written in:

• tone marks, never tone numbers: nǐ hǎo, not ni3 hao3; the mark on a or e, on the o of ou, otherwise on the last vowel (liù, guī); the neutral tone unmarked (māma, xièxie, de, le);
• ü keeps its dots (nǚ, lǜ), and is written u after j q x y (qù, xǔ);
• words, not syllables: Zhōngguó, wǒmen, túshūguǎn; a verb with its aspect particle (chīle) and its complement (kànjiàn); particles, negations and measure words standing free;
• the apostrophe only before a syllable starting with a, o or e (Xī’ān, nǚ’ér);
• er-hua in the word (nǎr, wánr);
• capitals for names only (Běijīng);
• the tones the words have, not the sandhi (nǐ hǎo) — except 不 and 一, written as said (bú shì, yí ge).

---target: zh---[苹果]{translit:píngguǒ} = *apple*, [谢谢]{teal translit:xièxie} = *thank you*,[图书馆]{translit:túshūguǎn} = *library*.

kana: means nothing in a Chinese document.